Tag: 2011 movies

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

So this week was all about the Muppets and Miles. A better week of responsibilities could be constructed for me, but it’s hard to fathom how. I’ll cop to not loving the angle I took in writing about the new documentary about Kevin Clash, the Muppeteer who is the man behind Elmo. I feel like I’ve seen similar pronouncements about emotional steeliness in the face of emotional filmmaking as a precursor to confessing to prodigious tears. Still, it was absolutely the most honest way for me to write about the movie. Whatever flaws are in place, I can’t deny that … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

This week, I reviewed a fairly abstract, experimental movie that, were I a little more ambitious, could have being the starting point for an assessment of the very nature of cinema that could have run thousands upon thousands of words. I may actually get around to that take on it someday, as the film raises more questions than it’s really interested in answering. It strikes me as one of those efforts I might want to specifically revisit someday. I mean, why wouldn’t I, since I’m clearly willing to do something crazy, like watch Kevin Costner’s The Postman multiple times. Once … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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Take a left, a sharp left, and another left, meet me on the corner and we’ll start again

Dan Seeger

There’s a wholly earned stereotype surrounding British films, best encapsulated by Eddie Izzard, who referred to the standard as Room with a View and a Staircase and a Pond type movies. These are the sort of efforts that reach their … Continue reading Take a left, a sharp left, and another left, meet me on the corner and we’ll start again

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

After a long stretch in which it felt like my name was all over the site, I had a fairly light week at Spectrum Culture. The only thing I had go up was a review of a new western. This led to the sort of mini-treatise on the state of the modern western that’s almost inevitable, even if the same basic thesis on the current dynamics of the once-dominant film genre has been pertinent for about forty years now. I actually wish I’d had more room to stretch out (or, more accurately, more time to write it, which was my … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

So I spent a good portion of this week feeling pretty ill. That’s ill in a lying in bed moaning all day way rather than a nineties fresh beats rap way. I don’t know that my condition compromised my writing at all this week, but let’s just say it’s a little more difficult to write a review of a deliberately languid, existentially fraught Russian mood piece under those circumstances. My other piece of film writing was for the latest entry in our Oeuvre series on Samuel Fuller. After writing on one of his touchstone war pictures, I got a chance … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

It felt like I had a far busier week with Spectrum than I actually did, but I know it’s because I was also scrambling to get ready for everything that needs to be written in the week ahead. In terms of what went up, my output was fairly modest. I had a new film review up, evaluating a documentary that managed to provide a breakneck recap of the evolution of the New York City club scene before segueing into a true crime story with unexpected doses of lurid elements. It’s one of those documentaries that can succeed by simply telling … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

My posted work came entirely from the movie beat this week. I started with a French film that was a little wisp of of a thing. It may have sometimes felt like a foreign film softened into an American sitcom but it also featured Gérard Depardieu, who remains a marvelous actor, at least in his mother tongue, despite his recent unseemly exploits that made him the fodder for silly jokes. I also reviews a documentary about the Black Power Movement of the late-sixties and early-seventies. It had some basic structural flaws, but much of the footage was amazing. Angela Davis, … Continue reading Spectrum Check